this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
1106 points (96.6% liked)

Comic Strips

11794 readers
1923 users here now

Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.

The rules are simple:

Web of links

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
1106
Pure light being (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

We'll never know for sure, but just knowing how cats are today, I believe the hypothesis that they initiated it. The idea that people went out and brought in wild cats to keep down the rodent population doesn't seem as likely as cats going where the food is and people tolerating them because they killed the rodents (and the kittens being cute also probably helped).

[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

I support the theory that it was the cats who started it. They are also only partially domesticated. When humans began farming grains the rodent population near them exploded. Cats who were less timid around humans got more rodents. Humans seeing the value of having cats fed the cats during times when the rodent population was low.

If you've ever been around feral barn cats this pattern is the same today. They are constantly on the edge of being wild/domesticated.